The extent of cruelty towards animals

Introduction

In many countries in the Far East, cruelty to
animals is obvious and shocking. Western visitors to these countries are often upset at
the brutality and wanton cruelty they have seen. But in fact, much more cruelty actually
takes place in Western countries. Unlike in the Far East, the cruelty takes place behind
closed doors, and is carried out by corporations, rather than by individuals.

Factory farms

At least in the West, most people have some
affection for cats and dogs, and are upset when they hear of cruelty towards them. Yet the
pig, an equally intelligent animal, is treated with complete brutality.

In their natural environment, pigs would live in
social groups, and spend much of their time rummaging for food. Before giving birth, sows
make a nest and line it with leaves and twigs. In a factory farm, none of this is
possible. The baby piglet is forcibly removed from her mother and kept for most of her
life in a stall so small that she can barely move. While she is weaning her piglets, the
mother is constrained by an "iron maiden" which prevents movement altogether.
Because of the stress caused by this cruelty, pigs kept in factory farms often bite each
others tails. Instead of reducing the stress that causes this, farmers cut off their
tails with a pair of side-cutters. If a dog or cat were treated in this way, the owner
would be prosecuted and socially ostracised.

Chickens which are kept for eggs spend their entire
lives in a space half the size of a piece of writing paper. As many as seven birds are
kept together in the same cage, crammed so tightly that they can barely move. To stop them
pecking at each other of frustration, their beaks are cut off in a painful operation.
Fortunately, battery farms are illegal in many countries in Europe; however, this is not
the case in the USA.

Recent protests in the UK have highlighted the way
in which baby calves are taken from their mothers and trucked across Europe to be fattened
up for slaughter. In many cases, they had neither food nor water for two or three days.
But in fact the real horrors come after their journey.

Pale veal meat fetches a premium in expensive
restaurants: the meat tastes basically the same as ordinary meat, but is pale because it
contains very little iron. The flesh of very young calves is pale, but as soon as the
animals are weaned and start eating grass their flesh darkens. In order to feed them up,
while at the same time keeping their flesh light, they are kept on a liquid diet which
contains just enough iron to keep them alive, but permanently anaemic. They spend their
entire lives in crates so small that they cannot turn round, nor sleep properly. This
means that they are constantly uncomfortable, and are unable to groom themselves. They
have no bedding, because they might eat this, and thereby take in iron. To add to the
boredom and misery, they are kept in almost permanent darkness.

The only reason for this cruelty is so that the
large agri-business companies which run them can save a little money. It is not necessary
for animals to be kept in such intensive conditions.

Indeed, it is not necessary for humans to eat animal
flesh at all. Feeding plant protein to animals is extremely wasteful: it takes about ten
kilos of plant protein to produce about one kilo of animal protein. Because of this waste,
there is not enough food for everyone on the planet.

Animal experiments

Animals are also regularly abused in the name of
science. Contrary to what the mainstream media would have us believe, the vast majority of
animal experiments are not part of essential medical research. Nor is the cruelty limited
to rats. Dogs, cats and even chimpanzees are regularly abused in experiments which are
deliberately painful.

Animal experiments fall into three main categories.
First, there are non-military experiments, which are carried out in universities and
research institutes throughout the world. Some of these experiments are directly relevant
to medicine: they extend our knowledge of physiology, and help us to understand drugs and
disease processes. However, many more are only of theoretical interest. For example,
animals may be given electric shocks in order to investigate learning behaviour: thousands
of experiments are performed, most of which are essentially repetitions of what has gone
before. Little is learnt, and most of the results are irrelevant to humans.

A more sinister area of research is the military.
Although this is funded by tax-payers, the nature of the experiments, and the results
obtained, are kept secret. In his book "Animal Liberation" Peter Singer
describes a series of experiments in which chimpanzees are taught to control a type of
flight simulator using a series of electric shocks. When they had done this, they were
irradiated and exposed to nerve gas, to see how this affected their ability. In practice,
this meant that the animals were so ill they could barely move, yet at the same time had
to control the machine: they received electric shocks each time they made a mistake. After
a thousand monkeys had been deliberately tortured in this way, it emerged that the results
were of little real use.

A third area of research is product testing. The two
best-known procedures are the Draize test and the LD-50 test. The Draize test is used to
test the effect that caustic substances have on a rabbit's eyes. Rabbits are used
because they dont cry: this means that the test substance stays in place until it is
removed by the experimenter, sometimes as much as three weeks later. During this period,
the rabbit is completely immobilised, and is in continuous pain. The effect of the test
substance is determined by comparing the state of the rabbits eye against a series
of standard pictures: depending on the test substance, the eye may be ulcerated, swollen,
bleeding, or completely destroyed. The Draize test is used regularly on tens of thousands
of animals a year to test new cosmetics, cleaning fluids, and so on.

The LD-50 test is used to test the toxicity of new
products. In this test, animals are force-fed varying amounts of the test substance: the
aim is to see how much is needed in order to kill half the subjects. In practice, this
means that animals are kept in obvious distress for many weeks or months: it is not
possible to put them out of their misery, because this would defeat the whole purpose of
the test. Moreover, some test substances are not actually toxic. This means that the
animals are killed, not by poison, but because their stomachs burst or because their guts
become completely blocked up. It is extremely doubtful if the bulk of these experiments
are of any real use: for example, the amount of toothpaste that would be needed to kill a
rat, is, in human terms, equivalent to several litres. It is doubtful if many humans would
accidentally eat the equivalent of fifty tubes of toothpaste.